We
see Dexter walking on the beach, thinking (as usual) about being different,
when he is called over to a crime scene.

The
"Ice Truck Killer" has left a bloody, severed hand propped up
on a beach chair - right on the public beach.

This
prompts another flashback memory of Dexter's childhood: He's on the same
beach with his foster family, and they're posing for a family photo next
to palm trees.

Dexter's
father asks if Dexter was smiling, and when he learns he was not, he takes
the boy aside and lectures him on fitting in.

Young
Dexter fakes a smile for the next photo (as the family happily yell out
their version of "Cheese!"... "Stinky Feet!")

( They filmed another
brief scene on this same stretch of beach.

In Episode
5 (Season One),
"Love American Style", there's a wordless scene where Rita
meets her maid on the beach to tell her that her missing fiancee hasn't
been found. The maid is sitting on the sand, staring out across Dexterean.
As Rita approaches, she looks up hopefully. Rita just shakes her head,
then quietly sits down on the sand next to her. )

Q.
What is it actually in real life?

A. A beach,
but not in Miami.

Q.
Where can I find it in real life?

A. The producers
went to the trouble of putting up a fake sign in the background reading
"Petrie Beach", but there is no "Petrie Beach"
in Florida.

They shot this
scene on the beach of Fort Lauderdale, Florida (about 30 miles
north of Miami), at the north tip of South Beach Park, with
the camera looking north/northeast from the beach.

The main hotel-like
tower you see on the beach when Dexter is walking towards the crime scene,
is the Illini Condo, located at 545 S. Fort Lauderdale Beach
Blvd, in Fort Lauderdale, FL. (The red-colored building we see behind
the Illini is the "Courtyard Fort Lauderdale Beach" hotel,
at 440 Seabreeze Blvd.)

The crime
scene (with the severed hand) was shot on the beach just southeast
(perhaps 500 feet) of the Illini condo tower, near the spot where Seabreeze
Blvd splits and becomes South Atlantic Blvd.

Earlier in the
same scene, they shot the girls roller-skating a little bit farther
north on the beach, at 5th Street & S. Atlantic
Blvd.

A. This was
a hard one. Since I live in L.A., and since Live Local doesn't
provide their usual great "Birds-Eye" aerial photos for the Fort
Lauderdale area, it's very difficult for me to verify locations there.

But I had a
good clue to go on. When Dexter is on the beach and looks at the
girls roller-skating by, if you slo-mo it, you'll see the name "Treasure
Trove" on a sign on a building behind them. The Treasure Trove is
a bar on 5th Street in Fort Lauderdale.

But I felt I
had to verify it by matching the buildings seen lining the beach. So, deprived
of Birds-Eye photos, I resorted to Googling for photos of the area, and
after a long, long search, I was able to pull up skyline photos which showed
the exact same buildings.

Next, I had
to find the name and addresses of the two buildings closest to the camera.
I did that by determining what the general addresses were on Atlantic Blvd
in that 5th Street area, then trying to match hotels or condos to similar
addresses. I finally found the right two, and matched up the addresses
with photos of the buildings via Google.